When family planning funding was further reduced in April and May, concern intensified about the potential impact on maternal mortality and young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health information. Other donor countries responded with the She Decides initiative, led by Dutch minister Lilianne Ploumen,which set out to raise $600m (£450m) to compensate for the shortfall created by the Trump administration.

People in Brussels stage a women’s rights protest during the US presidential inauguration on 20 January 2017. Photograph: Stephanie Lecocq/EPA

Setting the tone for a year when elections brought big changes in governance, Adama Barrow ended Yahya Jammeh’s 22-year rule in the Gambia. Jammeh, whose exit terms meant he avoided prosecution and was able to keep many assets, departed only after mediation by west African neighbours and the threat of armed intervention.

Data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that six European countries – the UK, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden – hit the 0.7% UN aid spending target.

A malnourished boy is weighed at an intensive care unit in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida, Yemen. Photograph: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

In a report published to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam said it was “beyond grotesque” that a handful of rich men are worth $426bn, equivalent to the wealth of 3.6 billion people.

EU commissioner Neven Mimica pledged a €225m (£200m) support package for the Gambia, which he said was “virtually bankrupt”. Following in his footsteps, Boris Johnson became the first British foreign secretary to visit the country.

The fallout from Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries was a recurrent theme of 2017. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

While Chad’s foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, was elected as the new head of the African Union, outgoing chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma condemned the proposed US travel ban on refugees from Somalia, Libya and Sudan. Morocco rejoined the AU after a row over the status of Western Sahara more than 30 years ago.

A powerful video report showed how anti-slavery activists are often the only chance of escape for the thousands of vulnerable Russians lured from cities to the remote republic of Dagestan, where they are enslaved in rural brick factories and farms.

Médecins Sans Frontières hailed trials in Niger of a vaccine against rotavirus as a “game changer” in the battle against the virus, which claims the lives of an estimated 1,300 children daily, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

June

The UK held a general election on 8 June triggered by the outcome of the referendum on whether to leave the EU. Despite continued sniping from the hard right, the government maintained its commitment to 0.7% of gross national income for development aid.

The British Government published its first annual report on how funds were spent through the conflict, stability and security fund which some consider a symptom of the increasing militarisation of aid.

August

South Sudanese refugees waiting to be relocated prepare to board a truck at Imvepi reception centre in north Uganda. Photograph: Isaac Kasamani/ECJ

Portraits of South Sudanese refugees in Uganda – in pictures

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The number of South Sudanese fleeing across the border to Uganda passed a million. A further million have fled into Ethiopia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in what has become the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis.

September

With conflict and climate change undermining food security, causing chronic undernourishment and threatening to reverse years of progress, UN agencies warned that world hunger was rising for first time this century.

Iraq's killing fields: the lethal legacy of landmines – in pictures

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Photos by Sean Sutton marked the 20th anniversary of the global mine treaty, agreed on 18 September 1997. The pictures showed specialists in Iraq working to clear and destroy some of the millions of pieces of deadly ordnance left by war.

October

In a dispatch from Togo, reporter Mawuna Koutonin talked about what changed when the government turned off the internet in an effort to hold back the mobilisation of young activists. In Zimbabwe, governance tensions rose more visibly to the surface.